Snow will melt (and spring will come)
by KittyFluffyninja
Summary: Because sometimes goodbye doesn't mean never coming back. /"I'm glad I met you."/


_I wrote this while feeling rather peaceful and optimistic, and I hope it shows.  
__I had more to write here for you but I'm so nervous and it all ran away. So you get short authors note sans me explaining how I feel about ferriswheelshipping. Yay?  
_

* * *

_Snow will melt (and spring will come)_

.

She finds him sitting under a tree, surrounded by a plethora of Unova-native pokémon. He watches her walk up to him, a small smile on his face.

"I'm sorry." Is all he says.

The spring deerling and whimsicott move out of her way as she makes to sit beside him. "I thought you were leaving."

N sighs and shrugs slim shoulders. "I had to say goodbye, didn't I?"

He's talking slower than he normally does, Touko notices. Almost like he's focusing more into every word, and she plays with the idea that maybe it's because things mean more to him now.

He seems happier than usual, and a small part of Touko is happy, too.

"Not to me?" she asks softly. He moves slightly as if startled. She doesn't want to look at his face.

"I thought…" and he makes a quiet noise in his throat that sounds like a laugh. "I thought you wouldn't wish to see my face again."

"Why would―"

"I was naïve. Cripplingly naïve. A world where pokémon and humans were separated." He sounds apologetic and strangely reflective. N crushes a handful of decaying leaves in his hands, and Touko can see the frustrated tension running through the tendons moving his fingers. "It was a dream, nothing more. A child's dream." He lets the pieces fall through the gaps, and to Touko it's like watching something much sadder.

"I'm not delusional," he says, and she believes him. "I have lived my whole life watching and learning. And I have watched and learnt a lot. Pokémon cannot be separated from humans. Things just aren't so simple. My f― Ghetsis was wrong, the sages were wrong, and I was wrong. I feel so silly, now. All my words were just baseless gibberish of an infant. I didn't think anyone would want to be around that. Not after the mistakes I've made."

She doesn't agree with that. But she grew up with a mother that always said mistakes were the stepping stones of success, and N grew up with a father that she cannot imagine thought the same. She wants to tell him everything will be alright. That a mistake isn't the end.

But he's said so much, and if she tries to counter it all she knows that before she finishes even she won't know what the point is.

"I want to be around you." She quietly opts for just that, and hopes it will be enough.

She can feel his eyes on her, and she looks up to the crystal grey that seems to reflect everything in this world. All the pain, wonder, anger, all of it.

"If I were to have lived a different life than this one," he says, "I would want to have grown up with you and your friends."

Touko hears her heart break. It's the sound of a child sobbing in the dark of a massive castle, and the crying of the wounded pokémon that is their only comfort. It's the colour green. "I would too, N."

They sit there like that for a while. The silence is comfortable, completely different from the awkwardness she felt on the Ferris wheel. She would sit like this forever, surrounded by solemn and beautiful pokémon with a man she could never forgive because he's never done anything wrong. The sun dapples on the leaves, and the shade is lovely.

Everything is lovely.

"You're not hated," she needs to say, and does.

She thinks she knows what else to say now, too.

He seems more surprised at that, but she continues. "Don't ever think you're hated, because you never will be. You're very kind, N." She reaches to pet a purrloin behind the ears but it hisses and flinches away. They both watch as it continues grumbling and settles in N's lap. He scratches it behind its ears, and she smiles as it begins to purr. He reaches a hand out for hers, and when she gives it to him he shows her the way to pet the purrloin so that it trusts her.

"You are so very kind," she whispers. She feels like crying, but she doesn't know why. "I don't think you're a freak. I don't think you're childish, or were being childish. I don't not want to be around you. In fact, I think you might be better company than my brother, and we're attached at the hip.

"Mistakes aren't the end, N. It's only the end when you let them be the end. I don't think anyone blames you for what went on there." She stops, because it feels horrible to pity him.

"You know, N," she says, and every syllable is like ideals on her tongue, "I think you could still grow up with us. And it doesn't have to be in a different life."

N sits silently for a while, and she beings to worry that she said something wrong. But then she looks, and there are gentle tears streaming down his face, and she knows she said something right.

The pokémon, all very concerned where N is involved, don't make a sound or a move. Touko thinks maybe the world has stopped for him, stopped to give N a chance to try again. She has to get back to her brother and friends, though maybe her time has stopped for him, too, because she doesn't feel like ever walking away again.

The purrloin leaps off as N curls into himself. Touko thinks she hears a 'thank you' but she doesn't know.

"I will come back," he finally says, and this time Touko is sure she isn't hearing things. "I will come back, one day, and then I'll take you up on your offer." Touko wonders if the disappointment of him leaving outweighs the joy of him coming back, but she knows the answer to that already.

"And I'm glad I didn't leave right away." He moves to his feet, and then turns to help her up. His hand is soft, like that of a prince. A prince whose castle has crumbled around him so he may see the world without walls.

He waits a second before hugging her. "Thank you, Touko. I'm glad I met you."

She hugs him back. He smells of nature and the promise of new beginnings.

"I'm glad I met you, too."


End file.
